by Wendy James
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I get it. I’m fascinated too. Honestly. But I can’t just let you sit here gossiping all day.’
Yes, you can, came the chorus. We won’t tell. Come on, Miss.
‘But what we can do is use it,’ I told them, in my best inspirational-teacher voice. And I meant it. At first glance it might have looked like the tackiest of tabloid stories, but wasn’t that what drama, what all art, was primarily about? To explore the full range of what it means to be human, the extraordinary moments as well as the ordinary, the extravagant and the necessary.
So instead of the dull double period I’d planned, the class worked on three-minute improvisations in groups of two, exploring whatever elements of the story interested them.
First though (there’s always a quid pro quo for classroom fun) we discussed the story’s meaning. What was the significance of this tale of abduction, imprisonment and escape? Could they locate any universal resonances, thematic implications, mythological connections? What might it tell us about the times we lived in, contemporary culture?
As always, the class came up with more than I expected, surprising me with their insights. It was a story about moving from childhood to adulthood; a story about the perversion of adult power; a story about abuse, but without real physical harm; it was a story about courage, about heroism, about oppression and freedom.
‘Does it remind you of any other stories? What about fairy tales?’
‘Cinderella?’
‘It’s sorta like a modern Hansel and Gretel, isn’t it? Only there’s no Hansel.’
‘And no gingerbread. Or lollies.’
‘The basement would be, like, the cage.’
‘But she didn’t get to push the witch into the fire before she left.’
‘They haven’t actually found her yet. Maybe she did.’
We discussed characterisation. I asked them how they imagined the girl. They’d seen snippets on the news, but what sort of a girl was she really? What sort of a girl was she before she got into this situation? Was there anything that made her particularly vulnerable? They knew bits and pieces about her: that she was a foster child, a scholarship girl at a posh boarding school, that she was probably a bit of an outsider, not a rich kid. Bright, hardworking, ambitious most likely. And they could see from the pictures that she was pretty. But networked beings that they were, they knew other things too, things that hadn’t been reported in the media. These days there was always someone who knew someone who knew someone.
‘I have a friend,’ one girl said, ‘who went to her old high school. She was a bit of a skank, apparently.’ Another girl said she’d heard Ellie Canning had been in trouble for drugs, that she was about to be expelled anyway. Someone else had been told she was a Jesus freak.
‘And what about the two women,’ I asked. ‘Who were they?’
So far, very little information had been released about the women who abducted the girl. All we knew was that there were two: one middle-aged, the other elderly. And then there was the intriguing question of motivation. What on earth was the rationale behind the kidnap? Why did they take her? Why did they keep her?
‘I really don’t get it, what would two old women want with a girl our age?’ asked one. ‘What would be the point?’
What indeed?
‘Hey,’ said one of the boys, ‘you live with your mother, don’t you, Miss? Somewhere out of town? How do we know it wasn’t you?’
‘But Miss lives miles from where she was found,’ someone else chipped in. ‘As if Miss would kidnap a girl.’
‘What would I want another teenage girl for,’ I sighed, ‘when I’ve got all of you?’
They had no trouble imagining the scenario and the characters, but a truly plausible motive eluded them.
Inevitably the subject of sex reared its head. There had been no mention of the girl having suffered any sort of sexual trauma, but what else could it be, they wondered. They knew all about the most recent high-profile abduction cases; they’d read the news, seen the movies – the ones where the girls had been held for years, given birth even, and they all knew that on some level these cases always involved sex. But in those cases the perpetrators were always men. Our scenario was quite different: this time the villain wasn’t male, and the idea perplexed as much as it intrigued.
‘It’s totally weird though, isn’t it, Miss? I mean, women don’t really do that sort of thing?’
‘Don’t they?’
‘Maybe they’re lesbians,’ one girl offered tentatively.
‘But they’re both old, aren’t they? Erg.’
‘That doesn’t stop them being perverts.’
‘Are you saying lesbians are perverts? OMG. That’s like totally homophobic.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Maybe she wasn’t there for the women. Perhaps they’d just sort of caught her, and were getting her ready for a man? Maybe she escaped before he got there?’
‘Maybe they’d captured her for the white slave trade?’
‘Maybe it was a brothel?’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘these are all good ideas. But I want you to try a bit harder, think a bit more deeply. What else could it possibly be? Aren’t people ever abducted for other reasons?’
‘Maybe they’d taken her there to do the cleaning?’
‘Maybe,’ said Jess Mallory, one of my more promising students – a quiet, diffident girl who had a surprising intensity onstage, and who had been given the main part in the school play. ‘Maybe the younger woman wanted a friend. Maybe she was lonely. Or maybe she wanted a daughter?’
When it came to the crunch they all avoided making motive explicit in their improvs. Most of them portrayed the girl thrashing about, terrified, desperate to escape, and her captor either vicious and abusive, or stern, cold, impervious.
Only Jess Mallory’s vision departed from this. Jess’s kidnapper sat by the girl’s bedside, held her hand and crooned nursery rhymes – ‘Three blind mice, see how they run’, her voice high and wispy and slightly off-key. She smoothed back her captive’s hair, murmured words of love, told her stories, echoes of familiar fairy tales, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, talking to her as if she were her long-lost daughter, or the ghost of the woman’s own past. The captive, played by Katie Miller, one of my least enthusiastic students, lay as if catatonic, eyes open, but displaying no emotion at all. And it was this particular tableau, the entire class agreed, that was the most terrifying, the most sinister of all.
‘Why?’ I asked them. ‘What’s so scary about it?’
Only Jess had an answer. ‘It’s because the woman thinks she’s doing the right thing by the girl. She actually thinks she loves her . . .’
Even Mary had been briefly intrigued by the story. Despite the fact that she spent half her day in front of the television, any real-world events generally seemed to wash over her. Occasionally she would surprise me by mentioning some random item of news – that the renovations to the local council chambers were going to cost almost a million dollars, for instance, or that a local farmer sold a bull for a record sum. This sort of detail generally disappeared from her memory almost immediately, but she was wide-eyed about the abduction.
‘She reminds me,’ Mary said, ‘of a girl I knew when I lived in Paris.’
‘I didn’t even know you lived in Paris.’
‘That’s because it’s none of your business.’
Paris was clearly a conversational red flag. I changed tack. ‘Who does she remind you of?’
‘Who?’
‘The girl who was kidnapped.’
‘I already told you. This slut I knew in Paris.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t look so shocked.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Yes, you are. I can tell. You’re making that face – like someone farted.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Anyway, we were all into it. We were all sluts. That was our job.’
‘Okay.’
�
�That’s what the back-up singers were there for really, to service the boys. And don’t tell me it was any different in TV land, Miss Sanctimony.’
‘You were telling me about the girl? Your friend.’
‘Who?’
‘The girl in Paris.’
‘Oh, her. She went by the name Colette de la, de la – some bullshit French name – but her real name was Betty Kane. She had tickets on herself, told everyone she was related to royalty, but that was just rubbish. She had no class. And she’d sleep with anyone, given the chance. It didn’t matter if it was her best friend’s boyfriend, everyone was fair game. Didn’t matter if they were old or young, if they were fat or had no teeth. They just had to have a cock. Although, there was a rumour that that wasn’t important either, but I think she probably spread—’
‘But why does she remind you of Ellie Canning?’
‘What?’ Mary’s interest in the present had flagged, she was wandering in the labyrinth of her past.
‘You said she reminded you of the girl who was abducted. Ellie Canning. The one that’s been in the news. The schoolgirl.’
‘Oh, that girl. She likes sex. You can tell by the way she runs her tongue over her lips when she talks. Betty did that too.’
‘Oh.’
‘And she’s a liar.’
‘So, how do you know that? The way she touches the side of her nose with her little finger?’
Mary rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be sarcastic, sweetie. It doesn’t suit you. It’s just that it’s a bloody stupid story. It’s an unbelievable story. Why would two women abduct a young girl? What were they going to do with her? It’s so fucking ridiculous, it has to be a lie.’
I called Mary Mum until I was ten, even though I rarely saw her. My grandparents insisted on it, even though Nan was, to all intents and purposes, my mother, Pop my father. Although Mary’s visits to my grandparents’ home were ostensibly to see me, they weren’t really, and by the time I was seven or eight I understood this. Her visits were for money, or for somewhere to stay, briefly; or sometimes, I think now, maybe as a reminder that there were people who loved her, and that she had a past that was nothing like her present. None of these reminders changed the way she lived her life, though. And the fact that her present included me, her daughter, seemed to have very little meaning for her. I wasn’t a part of that benign past she wanted to recall. Her mother and her father, and their gentle uncomplicated love for her – that was what she came back for. I wasn’t a real part of her endless present either – whatever sad mess that was – the present that she couldn’t seem to escape, and it seemed to me then, didn’t really want to either.
She would arrive unannounced, and stay just long enough to enjoy the prodigal’s return: the nutritious meals, the clean sheets, the early nights, the hot showers. The desperate aching love of her parents. And then she’d go.
There was never any warning, never any preparation. Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning and there she’d be, sprawled on my grandparents’ good lounge, Nan’s crocheted arm covers all awry, cushions tossed aside. To my sleepy eyes she seemed almost fairy-like – ethereal and not quite earthbound, which was true, I guess. She certainly wasn’t any part of our routine domestic realm.
Or I’d arrive home from school, and Mary would be perched up on the kitchen bench, grimy backpack at her feet, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of something in the other, watching Nan prepare dinner. She’d look down at me, distant, but offhandedly kind, and tweak my hair, give me a wink, a lopsided not-quite smile, sing a few bars of the old song, always getting it slightly wrong. Oh, Suzannah, oh don’t you know it’s me. And I’d smile back shyly, desperate for her attention. Always knowing that just as I began to feel the shyness dissolve, the bonds of wanting and need beginning to strengthen, she would disappear.
When she was there, we all knew to keep our distance – any sign of our wanting more would be enough to make her restless, encourage her to leave early. My grandparents had learned the hard way that Mary would only put up with their love if it was disguised. Love could be practical – my grandmother could feed her, fill the bath for her, wash and fold her clothes; she would happily take the cash my grandfather offered, the lifts here and there, but any questions, any demonstrations of affection were rejected; if they persisted, she’d go. There was never any place for me in this equation – what can a child offer their mother that isn’t about love, about wanting to show as well as receive it?
The last time I saw her, until the more recent call from the hospital, I was ten. Mary had turned up, even more wrecked than usual. She was thin, her skin was bad, her mood even more erratic than usual. There seemed to be marks – dark smudges that might have been bruises, fading scars, faint welts – all over her: on her face, her arms, her thighs. Nan’s eyes had widened when she first saw them, and she’d drawn a deep breath, a question formed and then evaporated.
After dinner, Mary showered and changed into a pair of Pop’s old flannelette pyjamas and then stretched out on the lounge, TV blaring, the oil heater cranked up, although it was only early April and we were still swimming at the beach on the weekends. I sat beside her, not too close, silent, my eyes glued to the screen, but every part of me quiveringly aware of her: the way she threw herself on the seat, completely relaxed, limbs deliberately spread-eagled; not the way I’d been taught to sit – primly upright, knees together and feet firmly on the ground. The way she cleared her throat unselfconsciously, the soft whistle of her breath, her restlessness; the way some part of her was always moving, a leg jiggling, her hands tapping out a rhythm. Despite the fact that she was using our everyday soap and shampoo, she smelled like no one else in the world – a mixture of cigarettes and something else, something sweet and slightly musky. Her presence made everything brighter, sharper, more alive.
She tugged her fingers through her still-damp hair, which was at least clean now, but horribly tangled.
‘Do you want me to get you a brush?’ I asked eventually, making it sound as offhand, as casual as I could, still not looking at her directly. Her ‘sure’ had been equally indifferent, but I remember running to the bathroom and returning with Nan’s brush – a well-loved Mason Pearson.
My mother had taken it and looked at it for a long moment, and then handed it back, a strange smile on her lips. ‘How about you do it for me, Oh, Suzannah?’
Mary had shifted, lying with her head hanging over the arm of the lounge as I brushed. It was a difficult job; her bleached hair was coarse and split, and the tangles were ferocious – the sort of knots that I’d ruthlessly cut out of my Barbie’s head. But I persisted, kept going long after I’d brushed out every snarl, even though by then Mary was fast asleep. Sleeping, she looked as young and as pretty as she was in the photographs Nan kept in a tin, photos from when she was in high school, from before she had me. I sat on the chair opposite, the brush forgotten in my lap, and just watched the rise and fall of her chest, the flickering of her eyelids, the twitches of her lips, the small sighs and gasps that people make when they’re sleeping. I wished so hard that she could stay like that, that she would stay there, forever. But by the next morning she’d gone, without warning. This time there were no hastily confected excuses, no pretending not to notice her mother’s distress, her father’s shining eyes.
And this time she’d never come back. There’d been the odd postcard, from London, Perth, Bali, Chicago, New York – Having a ball! Living the life! Wish you were here x – but there was never a return address, never any phone calls, not even the promise of a visit. There were no requests, as far as I knew, for cash either. By the time I was a teenager my grandparents barely mentioned her in front of me; it was as if they’d stopped wondering, stopped hoping, aloud at any rate – it was all too painful for everyone. They knew she was alive, which I suppose was better than not knowing.
Whether or not Mary knew – or cared – whether they were alive was another thing. She didn’t come home for either of their funerals. When Pop died, frie
nds of the family did their best to locate her, to send word, and I saw the desperate hope on Nan’s face at the crematorium, and then at the wake. But there was no one left to hope when it was Nan’s own funeral a few years later. I’d wondered if perhaps Mary herself was dead, and had been surprised by my own indifference.
Oh, Suzannah,
Oh don’t you cry for me.
I’d been back in Bondi for a little over a year and had just begun looking for full-time work, when I got the call from social services, informing me that a Mary Squires was seriously ill at St Vincent’s: I had been listed as her next of kin, and could I come in to discuss a care plan. I went to see her, more curious than anything else. If I’d known that by the following month my mother and I would be living together for the first time since my birth, it’s possible I’d have denied the connection, and exited, stage left.
ABDUCTED : THE ELLIE CANNING STORY
A documentary by HeldHostage Productions © 2019
ELLIE CANNING: TRANSCRIPT N2
It was the beginning of the mid-year holidays, and I’d come up to Sydney on the Friday night because I had an interview at St Anne’s College the following day. I was planning to stay with my mum, who’d been out of rehab for a few months, for the whole three weeks. It was sort of a trial visit. I’d spoken to her a few weeks before and she’d sounded really good, better than I could remember, and she really wanted me to come and stay. I wanted to see her, of course, and my foster parents thought it was a good idea, and the social worker agreed too. I would turn eighteen while I was there, so no one was all that worried. We decided I would just play it by ear. If Mum was good, I could stay the whole time and do all my revision there. If it didn’t work out I could just go back to Manning whenever I wanted to. We had the trial exams coming up as soon as the holidays finished, so it was pretty important that I had somewhere quiet to study.
